Hifiearspeakers
Headphoneus Supremus
What areas did you feel the Ether 2 fell short in? I have to admit to not personally meshing with the Ether Flow when I had it available on loan. For me it was just too clean and lacked any weight and while it is easy enough to over thicken a sound signature and make it a dull mess; however, lack of an appropriate amount of weight in the sound signature leaves the sound thin and etched for me and as crazy detail retrieval isn't my thing, I don't respond to such signatures. I know that many do, but it isn't my deal. I simply loved the 800S and do not feel that it lacked weight. I did plump up the lower frequencies slightly, but only a little. Still miss that headphone. Sigh, to be in an economic position where I didn't have to sell gear off to try new gear.
Well Dan likes to talk about the Ether 2 as having a much larger soundstage than his past iterations, but it was still just average at best. To go from something like the 800/800S would be a massive disappointment, but I was still disappointed coming from the HEK V2.
The other thing that was disappointing was that it didn’t sound like a planar. If I didn’t know the tech inside the Ether 2, I’d swear it was a dynamic with the sub bass tuned to be a little elevated. The HEK series sound very detailed and have precise imaging and that typical, beautiful planar mid range. Audeze always have that impactful and visceral bass response and they sound thick with large imaging.
The Ether 2 didn’t have any of that. It was average with detail retrieval, cast a smallish image, and the soundstage was nothing to brag about. There was nothing really bad about it, but because nothing stood out, it came across as boring and lifeless.
And even though it was super lightweight, it was still uncomfortable, because the earpad openings were too small and the clamping pressure too high.
Hard pass.
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